Trump administration announces new immigration rules to deny people visas for being poor

New regulations will also target migrants already legally in country seeking residency

The Trump administration has unveiled new rules that could deny visas and permanent residency to hundreds of thousands of people for being too poor.

In the latest effort by the president to place a tough immigration policy at the centre of his 2020 re-election campaign, the new rules will reject applicants for temporary or permanent visas for failing to meet income standards or for receiving public assistance such as welfare, food stamps, public housing or Medicaid.

Experts have said the plan could be the most drastic of Donald Trump’s efforts to restrict both legal and illegal immigration.

The Migration Policy Institute, a research organisation specialising in immigration issues, said that the change could result in more than half of all family-based green card applicants being denied. About 800,000 green cards were issued in 2016.

The new rule, introduced by Stephen Miller, the Trump administration’s lead on immigration policy, says that immigrants must be “self-sufficient”.

Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, denied that the change was targeting Latinos, saying: “If we had been having this conversation 100 years ago, it would have applied to more Italians.”

Mr Cuccinelli told Fox News: “The principle driving it is an old American value and that’s self-sufficiency.

“It will also have the long-term benefit of protecting taxpayers by ensuring people who are immigrating to this country don’t become public burdens, that they can stand on their own two feet, as immigrants in years past have done.”

In a press release, the White House claimed Mr Trump was ensuring non-citizens do not abuse “our nation’s public benefits”.

“To protect benefits for American citizens, immigrants must be financially self-sufficient,” Mr Trump was quoted as saying.

“Aliens will be barred from entering the United States if they are found likely to become public charges,” said the White House.

“Aliens in the United States who are found likely to become public charges will also be barred from adjusting their immigration status.”

The new rules come a week after the president was at the centre of controversy over both his policies towards, and language about, migrants to the US, in the aftermath of the mass shooting in El Paso, in which 22 people lost their lives and more than two-dozen were injured.

Many Democrats, and residents of the Texas city, claimed the president’s perceived racist rhetoric about immigrants was fuelling the sort of bigotry that led to the shooting at a Walmart store, allegedly carried out by a 21-year-old white man who is said to have posted a racist manifesto online just moments before the attack happened.

A number of local politicians, including 2020 Democratic hopeful Beto O’Rourke, and El Paso congresswoman Veronica Escobar, directly linked the president’s behaviour to the incident and urged him not to visit the city.